Etiquette and Vitriol (3 page)

AMANDA DOLOR
, Early thirties. A very attractive,
high-strung intellectual. She is mercurial and has a terrific
verbal capacity. It is important that she be very thin.

BEA
, Mid-fifties. A Jewish matron with a heavy
Long Island accent. She is abrasive and easily offended.

FORD DOLOR
, Mid-thirties. A strikingly handsome man,
Ford is a filmmaker and a man of ideas, not words.

SERGE STUBIN
, Thirty. Serge is a sexual being, and as a
runway model, he must be good-looking, although it is
possible that he is less attractive than his confidence would
indicate. Although intellectually out of his league with
Amanda, Serge is far from stupid.

OTTO WOODNICK
, Mid-thirties. Hugely overweight.
Otto is flamboyant, Jewish, insecure in the extreme and full
of rage. He is a verbal tornado, quite out of control.

 

SCENE
1:
Amanda

The Dolor living room in New York City, late at night.

SCENE
2:
Otto

Serge's studio apartment, the same night.

SCENE
3:
Fatty & Skinny Lay in Bed . . .

The Dolor living room, the next morning.

In the interest of accuracy, I have included an alternate ending in this edition. This secondary ending was used in the play's premiere in Washington, D.C. It is my feeling that both endings work, despite one being much darker than the other, and I have decided to include them both.

The lights come up on the Dolor living room. It is night. The room is decorated in an extremely young, “hip” manner. There is a hallway to the bedroom, a kitchen area, the main entrance and a powder room. Amanda is pacing, smoking a cigarette. She is listening to some sad, sophisticated jazz, wearing a T-shirt and leggings or casual pants. After a moment, she goes to the phone and dials
.

AMANDA
(Into the phone)
: Hello, Bi— . . . Damn. Hello, Binky. This is Amanda. If you're asleep, don't get up. If you're out, don't call me back.

(She looks at the phone as if she's just spoken gibberish and hangs up. She gets a New York Yellow Pages from a bookcase and looks up a number. She turns off the music and returns to the phone. She dials. This done, she presses a button which puts the call on speaker phone. We hear the ringing, and Bea is revealed.)

BEA:
Hello, Contact.

AMANDA:
Yes, hello.

(Pause.)

BEA
(Irritated)
: This is Contact. Can I help you?

AMANDA:
Yes. Well, probably not. I mean, I can't imagine how you could. I just, I wanted someone to talk to and it seemed too late to call anyone—

BEA:
What's your address?

AMANDA:
Pardon me?

BEA:
What is your address?

AMANDA:
Why do you ask?

BEA:
This is a crisis hotline. I need your address.

AMANDA:
I don't see how that's relevant.

BEA:
I am not allowed to talk to you without an address.

AMANDA:
I don't know that I want you—

BEA
(A threat)
: I'm hanging up.

AMANDA:
241 West 21st Street.

BEA:
That was so painful?

AMANDA:
I just don't see the purpose—

BEA:
Have you swallowed anything?

AMANDA:
I just wanted to talk to someone.

BEA:
What floor are you on?

AMANDA:
Six.

BEA:
Is the window looking more and more inviting?

AMANDA:
I believe you have the wrong idea.

BEA:
You have any firearms?

AMANDA:
Firearms?

BEA:
You know, guns, whatnot.

AMANDA:
Certainly not.

BEA
(Irritated)
: Are you lying to me? I will not tolerate being lied to!

AMANDA:
I'm not going to do anything drastic.

BEA:
Oh people say that. They always say that. People lie.

AMANDA:
I assure you, I have no intention of—

BEA:
Last week, Tuesday, I think, Tuesday or Wednesday, I can't remember—I'm on the phone forty-five minutes with this young man,
forty-five minutes
, and he's swearing up and down that he has no intention of doing anything—and after all that time, mittin-drinnen, out he sails. Right out the window. Dead.

AMANDA:
Oh my.

BEA
(A fact)
: People lie.

AMANDA:
What was troubling him?

BEA:
Oh, I can't remember. Something. Something was wrong with him. Who can keep it straight. But I tell you, I felt
VERY
betrayed!

AMANDA:
I won't jump out the window.

BEA:
That's why I'm on graveyard. I had a perfectly lovely shift: six to ten. After the talk shows and before the news. Now, I'm on graveyard.

AMANDA:
I'm sorry.

BEA:
I felt very betrayed.

AMANDA:
I understand.

BEA:
Right out the window. Splattered. Dead. I heard the whole thing. It was terrible. What can I do for you, darling?

AMANDA:
I just wanted to—talk to someone.

BEA:
You're lonely?

AMANDA:
Well, I wouldn't say that.

BEA:
No. You're calling strangers in the middle of the night, but you're not lonely.

AMANDA:
Alright, I'm lonely.

BEA:
Well, let me tell you,
everyone's
lonely, my dear—what's your name?

AMANDA:
Amanda.

BEA:
Amanda, loneliness is my oxygen. I breathe loneliness. I'm Bea, and you don't know what loneliness is until you've walked a mile in my shoes. You haven't tasted loneliness, you haven't been in the same state with it. I lost my husband several years ago—I don't want to dwell. Allif a sholem. So what's the trouble?

AMANDA:
My husband is . . . gone.

BEA:
Gone? You mean dead gone? What do you mean? Be specific.

AMANDA:
No, no. He's just gone.

BEA:
Is he missing? D'you call the police? Not that they'll do anything.

AMANDA:
I haven't called the police. I mean, he's fine. He called me to say he was fine. He said he needed some time to work.

BEA:
When was that?

AMANDA:
Two weeks ago.

BEA:
How long you been married?

AMANDA:
Three weeks.

BEA:
And he's been missing?

AMANDA:
Two weeks.

BEA:
I see.

AMANDA:
He's working on a film. He writes films.

BEA:
Did he write
Howard's End
?

AMANDA
(Bewildered)
: No.

BEA:
Too bad. I loved that picture! That is a beautiful picture. Did you see that picture?

AMANDA:
No.

BEA:
Ya should see it. See it on the big screen if you can. It was a lovely, lovely picture.

AMANDA
(Testy)
: Well, I didn't see it.

BEA:
Oh.

AMANDA:
He makes small, independent films.

BEA:
Did you see
Enchanted April
?

AMANDA:
No.

BEA:
Me neither. I'm dying to.

AMANDA
(Lighting another cigarette)
: The point is—

BEA:
Are you smoking?

AMANDA:
Why?

BEA:
Oh it's a terrible habit. You mustn't smoke. How old are ya darling?

AMANDA:
Thirty.

BEA:
You have your whole life ahead of ya, which, if you stop smoking, could be a long, wonderful adventure.

AMANDA:
I'm not smoking.

BEA:
I heard you.

AMANDA:
I have asthma. I wheeze sometimes.

BEA:
Are you lying to me!?

AMANDA:
No. I'm not. I'm not. I swear.

BEA:
Did you see
Room with a View
?

AMANDA
(Lying)
: Yes.

BEA:
Oh was that a wonderful picture? Did you love that picture?

AMANDA:
It was very good.

BEA:
I loved that picture. So let me understand. You've been married three weeks and your husband's been missing for two of them?

AMANDA:
Correct.

BEA:
Did your husband—what's his name?

AMANDA:
Ford.

BEA:
That's a beautiful name! I love that name. Did Ford—I love saying it—did Ford tell you where he was going?

AMANDA:
Well, it was a Monday. We'd spent the week on Martha's Vineyard. You see, it was our honeymoon and Ford has a friend who owns a house on Martha's Vineyard, which he never uses—

BEA:
What's his name?

AMANDA:
Who?

BEA:
The friend, the friend with the house.

AMANDA:
Why?

BEA:
Maybe I know him.

AMANDA:
Lillian.

BEA:
His
name is Lillian?

AMANDA:
Yes.

BEA:
Go figure.

AMANDA:
In any event, we spent the week at Lillian's house. It was our honeymoon.

BEA:
How was the sex?

AMANDA:
It was good.

BEA:
When you say “good,” you mean what, exactly?

AMANDA:
I mean it was good.

BEA:
We'll come back to that. So you're in the city with Ford— I love that name!

AMANDA:
Yes. We're back in the city. It's Monday morning. We had breakfast. And after breakfast, he told me that he wanted to go for a walk. So naturally, I started to put my shoes on. I thought he meant together.—But he said, he wanted to go alone. He was working on an idea for a film, mapping it out in his mind, as it were. I was a little hurt, to be honest. But I understand that the creative process is a very delicate dance. Ford is a genius. I'd seen all of his films before we'd ever even met, and I always found them—searing. Just searing and penetrating in a very powerful way. So, I didn't want to question his process. It's very important that an artist be nurtured. . . . So he went out. And I took a shower. This was about noon. After that, I tried to do some writing. I'm a poet—vocationally. That's what I do. I was working on a new poem: “Untitled 103,” and I was very absorbed in the poem. It's about wind. Wind as a metaphor for God as a force in our lives. Or the lack thereof. The stillness, the arbitrariness of a random world. And the work was going very well. I was really just vomiting images like spoiled sushi (that may be an ill-considered metaphor, but you get my gist). I was absorbed and productive.

I'd written—three lines, I think, when I looked at the clock and it was ten-thirty. This happens sometimes, when I'm writing. It's as if I fall into a hole in the time-space continuum. I am pulled—I've strayed.

So it's ten-thirty and I haven't heard from Ford. But I didn't worry. I was unfamiliar with his process and it seemed possible that he'd been out walking for
ten and a half hours
.